“Your NMC Campus Story” highlights the many ways in which educators are using the NMC Campus in Second Life to spark innovation, learning, and creativity. This post introduces us to Professor Jan Baum of Towson University and her Hype project as part of a Global Design Collaboration program.
I have an ongoing collaborative art and design project that utilizes digital media in several forms. This semester’s iteration is the Global Design Collaboration. I used the NMC listserv along with other professional SL listservs to put out a call for participants. The response was excellent and far ranging. I received interest from a number of US institutions as well as institutions from Scotland, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Thailand and I think a few more. The core group is Towson University, Winthrop University and the University of Dundee in Scotland. Other interested parties may join us in Second Life and participate in less central ways; the project is open for collaboration. The faculty involved in the project, myself, Kim Voigt from Towson University, Courtney Starrett from Winthrop University and Sandra Wilson from the University of Dundee, have given our students a design problem titled Hype. We ask students to examine the idea of hype and using digital design software design an object based on their design research. We are using Second Life in a number of ways. Each student has an interactive display board where they will post an image of themselves, their design research and concept sketches along with notation about their design thinking and response to the project. [Rachel Timmins’, aka Granule Admiral, display board is available.]
All participants meet in Second Life on pre-arranged dates for discussion, design reviews, and get to know each other. From this we hope students will identify peers that they are interested in collaborating with. Collaboration will consist of dialogue as well as sharing digital files and influencing each other’s designs. We are encouraging students to use all kinds of communication technology for the project: Skype, email, blogs, etc. Each student will have a version or versions of the resulting object/design digitally printed or rapid prototyped in Real Life. All of the work will be presented in a gallery format in one of the galleries on the Towson Innovation Lab.
I am cataloging the project at www.globaldesignchallenge.wordpress.com.
And we are using http://globaldesigncollaboration.ning.com as a constant interactive space.
Please share “Your NMC Campus Story†by writing beth@nmc.org.